Read any good fiction lately?

[eldoth_terevan]

Phillip Pullman, Kalika. From what I can glean of those novels from the Wikipedia entry they look like a good read and superficially - without having read them - they remind me of The Chronicles of Narnia which I always enjoyed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials:_Northern_Lights ... I think you might like Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams, which is about a young cat on an epic journey. I also always liked Watership Down, but some find it to be a bit depressing. I am going to look for those Johansson books, Baldur, thank you. Also gonna generally mention Olaf Stapledon the author (bet Bilbous knows him), pretty much anything by him is good as well but First and Last Men is very interesting ... http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/olaf-stapledon/ ... good thread BTW, thank you Bilbous.

[Robinmagus]

Aything Mercedes Lackey writes.Especually the Heralds of Valdemar series.

[Coneitic]

The taking by dean koontz. one of the best i ever read. i like alot of his work because hes the complete opposite of stephen king. tho steven king is a great writer his stories end to much in spiritual twist. like the book he wrote called the stand. awsome first part of the book. but then turned into a plot twist about the devil and ruined it. dean koontz does the opposite. he causes a problem and has everyone looking for answers, spiritual or whatever and have a more realistic twist.
plus he writes in very vivid detail. and the book, its just keeps you involved to where you wont put it down.... even when your driving. =)

[bilbous]

Indeed I have heard of Olaf Stapledon although I can't remember what I might have read by him, even after looking at his bibliograhy on wikipedia. They do have a site link on that page to an online archive of etexts of some of his out of print work.

I looked at the link for "His Dark Materials: Northern Lights" which is about the movie of the book that is in the works and followed it back to the page about the books. The oddest thing happened then. One particular word on the page jumped out and slapped me in the face like some fish on the line. It was the term used by my old friend Michael Morrcock , multiverse. I had a great time reading his Eternal Champion books which included such (anti-)heroes as Elric of Melnibone, Erekose, Dorian Hawkmoon and Prince Corum among others who were aspects of the same character in their different universes. Indeed in several books two or more of them came together to defeat exceptional foes. These books were all self contained and yet connected. Thus there were six or seven Elric books that could be read without the others, three each for the other characters I mentioned I think and a host of others.

[eldoth_terevan]

Indeed, Elric and the Eternal Champion bits. Definite must reads, all of those books. In the original Deities and Demigods ruleset for D&D there were mythos for Elric and related characters and also for the (cannot remember worldname) but they were the Fahferd and the Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber. I read those about the same time as the Elric stories, years ago. Leiber developed ideas along a lot of the same lines. Of course this will take us back to Robert Howard, Clark Ashton Smith... and ultimately the discussion will touch on Lovecraft... The Dean Koontz books are very good as well, Whispers was actually quite truly scary...

[bilbous]

I liked Moorcocks Dancers at the End of Time series as well as the Jerry Cornelius ones. Elric put in an appearance at the End of Time.

Another prolific author that was engaging was Jack l. Chalker ^w Although after a while his series tended to become formulaic. Still a good read.

So many authors, over the years, makes it hard to pick out some over the others. I think my favorite author has to be Philip K. Dick^w

[eldoth_terevan]

Phillip K. Dick is kinda like the force... sorta permeates everything. I have one called Now Wait for Last Year on my shelf that I have not read yet.

[bilbous]

I've got too much to do to spend my time haggling over whether a robant bill collector is mechanically capable of telling lies or not.

Not one of his best, not one of his worst. I enjoyed "A Scanner Darkly", the book was better than the movie though. A number of his books were made into movies, notably, Blade Runner" from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" I'll have to read that someday, "Minority Report",  and "Total Recall" from "We can Remember it For You Wholesale." Unfortunately the movies tend to be unfaithful to the text. Most of Dick's characters are rather ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. "A Scanner Darkly" seemed pretty faithful however.

[Isra]

Orson Scott Card - Ender`s game and the sequels is a must if you`re into the genere , aswell as Asimov and Herbert . But i`m not saying anything new here , this writers are the giants of the SF literature . Latel? I`m about to finish an interesting trilogy , Helliconia , by Brian Aldiss , it fits in the fantasy genere . Allso Silmarillion,  Tolkien`s masterpiece comes to mind , finished it a few months ago , and I swear it`s ....stuning

[eldoth_terevan]

Gotta second the Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game & The Speaker of the Dead. Just great scope on the story and a bizarre take on evolution. They have been trying to make Ender's Game into a movie for a long time, but the project has been mired in controversy and strife. Ender's Game is really a must read for anyone who has experience with gaming simulations. The story is fantastic.

The Silmarillion is the most obscure of JRRs Middle-Earth mythos, but I thought it was fascinating, and in a way better than the trilogy. The story of Beren and Luthien is probably IMHO one of his most poignant stories. I know of Brian Aldiss and have read some short works long ago, but I will look at the books you mentioned. Thanks to both of you, I love finding good new books but there is such a propigation of fluff out there.

Yeah, Blade Runner. What else can you say? If I start talking about that I will ramble on about the symbolism in the book, and then the movie and waste thousands of bytes on this board. I saw it at a Science-Fiction convention in Chicago back in 83-84 for the first time, I think of it as an epiphany. Anyone should read DADES(BR)... heck, read the bits on PKDs life. His life reads like the X-Files, or at least he thought so.

[Idoru]

I realy dont read as much as I would like to.

Favourites I have read are, The dragons of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey (aimed at 12-15 year olds.... read them when I was 20 and thought they rocked )

Alistair Reynolds series of Sci-Fi books (just too cool for words IMO)

Stephen Baxters books Time and Space (fantastic reads altough a lconfusing at times)

[Goldir]

Fiction I have read in the last Month:

"Number of the Beast" - Robert A. Heinlein
"Friday" -Robert A. Heinlein
"The Stand" - Stephen King
"Hammered" - Elizabeth Bear
"Scardown" - Elizabeth Bear
"WorldWired"- Elizabeth Bear
"Empire & Ecolitan" - L.E. Modestit Jr.
"The Silmarillion" - J.R.R. Tolkien

The Silmarillion was more of a perusal/reference than a book that I "Read".  Trying to read that book is like trying to read the King James Bible, sequentially, from cover to cover.

[bilbous]

I enjoyed the Enders Game series  as well as Cards side series that followed the exploits of Bean and the rest of the students left behind when Ender went off to his destiny. I haven't got ahold of the last book of the series yet "The Shadow of the Giant" I think it is called. I went to buy it at a book store but it will not be soon that I will pay $12 for a paperback. The rest I found ebook editions of on the newsgroups so eventually I will find this last one.

If you are up for a challenging read have a look a "Dhalgren" by Samuel Delany. It comes in around 600 pages and has caused wars to happen at SF conventions--or at least heated debates.

On a lighter note I enjoyed Harry Harrisons "Deathworld" trilogy -- pure space opera.

I also recommend John Brunner. "The Sheep Look Up," "The Shockwave Rider," and of course "Stand On Zanzibar." Ursula K. Leguins "The Dispossessed" was a good read with a fairly mature theme (scholarly, not "Adult".) Also her Earthsea series was good although it may not seem like much nowadays.

Piers Anthony was good before he decided to become a formula author (similar to Stephen King who stinks ) Get ahold of Macroscope, the Manta series ("Omnivore", "Orn" and "Ox") the Battle Circle trilogy ("Sos the Rope", "Var the Stick" and "Neq the Sword". The Xanth series is light reading if you like puns. After that he got so prolific that it became impossible to keep up.

Andre Nortons Witchworld series was good. It is targeted at a younger audience.

Larry Niven is good for hard SF, particularly the "Ringworld" series.


I could go on...

[Kalika]

  yeah the enders game series rocks


ahaha i forgot to mention hunter s thompson, especially fear and loathing in las vegas but i like the other ones too...

hmm what else do i adore? mmmm eheheh percy bysshe shelley and william blake are good for poetry but i dunnos if that counts...brain doesnt work today (5 hour long math class )

[lordraleigh]

"War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strenght"

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty_Four - WARNING - Contain Spoilers ) . Pretty nice book with a thrilling history... and unfortunately much of its history became reality like for example surveillance, "Patriot Acts", "war on terrorism"(perpetual war), doublespeak, etc